


Who Is the Lamb and Who Is the Knife

by ShastaFirecracker



Series: Florence 'verse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Angst and Humor, Domestic Fluff, Law Student Sam, M/M, Mechanic Dean, Past Relationship(s), Teacher Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:12:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3105224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShastaFirecracker/pseuds/ShastaFirecracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The unfamiliar process of dating involves Cas and Dean's respective sexual histories raising their ugly heads every now and then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Who Is The Lamb

**Author's Note:**

> Potential trigger warnings in the end notes in case you don't want to be spoiled.

Who Is The Lamb

 

_“This is a gift_  
It comes with a price  
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?” 

 

November 8

 

Cas leans down and swallows Dean's gasps when he comes, still rocking his hips back to work Dean through the orgasm that had been a long time (pun intended) coming. Cas had set the pace, riding Dean torturously slow while pinching and twisting and abusing skin everywhere he could reach, then soothing it with his mouth, until Dean was an incoherent wreck.

It only takes a few strokes to bring himself off on Dean's stomach – Dean attempts to help but can only layer his hand over Cas' and idly rub his fingers while Cas jerks and cries out into Dean's mouth.

In the aftermath, dizzy with endorphins and unwilling to move even though this has to be getting uncomfortable for Dean, Cas opens his traitorous mouth and utters the words, “Are you clean?”

Dean stiffens under him, then relaxes and twitches and brings his hands up to pull at Cas' hair. “Rude,” he mutters into Cas' mouth, but Cas can feel him smiling.

Cas falls into kissing for a while. He likes kissing Dean always, but he has a particular love for this kind of kissing, a few degrees removed from passion – either after they've gotten off, or when they don't feel like they need to get off anytime soon. The certainty of sex is still there, but not urgent, not clouding.

Finally Cas murmurs into his jaw. “I only ask because I'd like to feel you inside me.”

Dean shudders, a fine tremble running through his whole frame. “Still am,” he whispers and gives a filthy little rock of his hips that reminds Cas – as if he needed reminding – that he hasn't pulled off yet.

Cas chuckles, sits up from Dean's mouth and, feeling slightly self-conscious about the display, lifts himself off Dean's mostly-soft dick, one hand between his legs to hold the condom in place. He strips it off Dean and ties it, fully aware that there is just no sexy way to get rid of a condom, but all the while Dean is giving him this stupid grin.

“Stop looking at me,” Cas mutters, maneuvering over Dean and dropping down like a 200-pound blanket.

“Oof,” says Dean. Then, after a moment, “But I like looking at you.”

Cas smiles into his shoulder.

After a while Dean makes a complaining noise and half-heartedly attempts to lever Cas off to the side. Finally Cas takes pity and rolls off. A little shuffling and shifting later, they're comfortably tangled and drifting on the verge of sleep even though the evening is still rather early.

Apropos of nothing, Cas says, “I've only ever had sex with three people.”

Dean doesn't respond for a while, and Cas is irrationally grateful for the lack of laughter or surprise.

“Sexy me, coy me, and kinky me?” Dean asks at last.

Cas laughs. “When have you _ever_ been coy.”

Dean snorts.

“You,” says Cas, “Amelia, and a male escort who went by the working name of Balthazar.”

It takes a beat, but then Dean starts laughing fit to bust a lung. He has to roll away from Cas to laugh harder, a deep-belly, full-body, eventually wheezing laugh.

Cas puts his face against Dean's shoulder, grins and shakes his head while Dean gets himself together.

“I should be the one asking if you're clean,” Dean manages eventually.

“I am.”

“A _hooker_ named _Balthazar._ ”

“Escort.”

Dean laughs again.

“He was a very classy hooker, Dean.”

Dean is incoherent, and moves a hand down to clutch his side.

Eventually, after much wheezing and deep, counted breathing, Dean asks, “So what the hell possessed you to bring this up?”

Cas isn't smiling anymore, though he trusts that Dean has no intention of throwing anything back at him to cause hurt. “I'm just saying,” he says. “That I have little sexual experience with men and I'd like to expand my horizons.”

“Oh, _that's_ no problem.” Dean rolls over to face him again. His eyes are still full of the warmth of laughter. He notices Cas not returning the look, though, and raises a hand to his forehead. “Seriously,” he says.

Cas sighs. “I knew I was gay,” he says. “Amelia knew I was gay. We'd separated already. I'd kissed a boy _once_ when I was a teenager and spent years self-flagellating about it. I didn't want to spend all the time and emotional effort of dating. I just wanted to fuck a male body until I couldn't think.”

Dean hmms. “Welp, that is what hookers are for.”

“No judgment?”

“Hell no, no judgment,” says Dean. “You think I haven't slept with hookers?”

“I don't know who all you've slept with,” Cas mutters, without thinking.

After a long stretch of silence, Dean says, “Is that what this is about, really?”

Cas can't bring himself to lie. Finally, he says, “No judgment,” but it sounds weak and searching even to himself.

Dean sighs. “Sam calls me serially monogamous,” he says. “I commit too much, I know I do. I mean, yeah, I like sex, so I've had a lot of it. But I've never cheated and I'm always careful.”

Cas shifts uncomfortably. “I didn't think you'd ever...”

“Nah, it's okay,” says Dean. “It's okay. It's a big difference. I didn't spend my youth repressing. I didn't really spent it connecting, either. Just Lisa, I guess. And there was a girl named Cassie.”

“Cassie,” Cas repeats, faintly.

“Musta been fate,” Dean says, with a sudden grin. “I have a type.”

Cas laughs quietly. “I don't believe in fate.”

“Then how the _hell,_ ” Dean says slowly, slipping into his seduction voice, “do you explain how I managed to convince you to come home with me that night, if you'd never slept with anyone you weren't married to or paying?”

Cas smiles. “I would say it's because you're very attractive,” he says, “but I don't want to stroke your ego.”

“No?” Dean murmurs, sliding close until his breath is warm on Cas' lips. “Wanna stroke anything else?”

“You make a persuasive argument,” Cas murmurs, reaching down between them to rub his palm a little too hard over Dean's soft cock, still a little lube-slick. “But I think you may be overreaching.”

Dean hisses and laughs in the same breath. “Okay, okay, you called my bluff,” he says. “I feel old.” But he kisses Cas anyway.

“How old are you?” Cas asks after a while, just curious. He's long since lost any reservation he had about an age difference, because if there is one it isn't evident. Cas has never made a reference that Dean hasn't gotten (though Dean does the reverse all the damn time, but that isn't a factor of age).

“Twenty-five,” Dean says.

Cas hmms. “Twenty-nine.”

“Cradle robber.”

After a beat, Cas replies, “Twink.”

Dean laughs. “Oh hell no,” he says. “You are so the twink.”

“203 pounds beg to differ,” Cas says, pushing himself up and over until he's half on top of Dean, threatening to full-body-blanket him like before.

“Ugh,” Dean whoofs.

They don't finish the conversation about condoms, but Cas can tell Dean is deflecting and he doesn't want to push it.

\---

 

November 15

 

The next time Dean sucks him off, he gets Cas good and worked up and then gives him a significant look through sun-blonde lashes and holds his hips very still with firm hands. Then he sinks his mouth down over Cas and just keeps. fucking. _going._

Cas has never been deep-throated before. It doesn't last long. Cas is almost terrified of the sensation, all too aware that Dean is choking on him, hyperaware of the fact that the fluttering, lava-hot muscle around him is Dean _swallowing._ And pulling back a little, breathing carefully, then sinking down again and hot hot hot and convulse and _drag_

Cas grips Dean's hair too hard to pull him off, fingers digging into scalp, and Dean cries out around just the head of Cas' cock as Cas starts to come. Dean works him through it one-handed, mouthing along the side of his dick, and somewhere through the haze Cas recognizes the gasp and shudder as Dean's own orgasm hits him hard and sharp.

When their breathing has normalized some, Dean kisses the inside of Cas' thigh and rasps, “Am I better than the classy hooker?”

Cas laughs breathlessly, slides his spread-open legs back together to ease himself off the bed. Dean attempts to get up from the floor, grimacing at his knees.

“You could've come up here,” Cas admonishes.

“Shut up, old man,” Dean grumbles.

Cas goes out into the kitchen to fill two glasses with tap water. The pipes are cold enough that the water is plenty refrigerated without ice.

Dean is already cleaned up and under the covers when Cas returns. “Does your throat hurt?” Cas asks, passing one glass to Dean who pushes up onto an elbow to drink.

“Nah,” says Dean. “Kinda scratchy. Thanks.” He reaches over to put the almost-empty glass on the bedside table.

Cas pulls back the covers and climbs in next to Dean, shuffling and moving until they're comfortably tangled. “No one's ever done that,” he says into Dean's shoulder.

“Not even the classy hooker?” Dean asks, still a little hoarse. “I knew I had mad skills.”

\---

 

November 21

 

The third time the subject of Balthazar comes up, Cas is having one of his bad days.

A normal, rational level of anxiety might politely be described as butterflies in the stomach. A little unpleasant, perhaps, but also a little euphoric, like a mild dose of some prescription painkiller that induces slight dissociation. Cas is familiar with butterflies. For him, butterflies are a baseline, an average state of being.

On a bad day, the butterflies are made of razors.

Cas has thought through many analogies and metaphors over the years, and after visiting New Orleans once he'd settled on the one he still uses: a crab boil. His insides are scorching, rolling, overboiling, cayenne-hot and full of spines. He can't eat, moving is hard, and it's all he can do to speak in short sentences and remember to keep taking one breath after another.

And yet it still isn't a panic attack, for which he is perversely grateful.

Nothing triggers this, it's just a thing that happens. He's been on medication for years and as far as he's concerned, paroxetine hydrochloride is the next best thing invented by humanity after the wheel, but it can't work all the time. It isn't a cure. So he has bad days, and he pretty much knows how to cope with them, just a matter of holding onto the safety rail and riding them out.

He hates to cancel classes even though he knows he should call in a sick day. He _is_ sick. It's taken him years and a lot of therapy to be able to admit that he really is sick without feeling guilty or like he's lying or overblowing the problem. Just because it isn't contagious, just because it isn't caused by a bacteria or a virus doesn't mean that what he's feeling isn't real. So he should call in sick, and he has done sometimes in the past, but. He is who he is.

And he hates cancelling classes, so he doesn't. And if he kneels over a toilet in the men's room three or four times between classes, breathing deep and focusing very, very hard on not throwing up, he doesn't have too much trouble making it through the rest of the day.

But he can't get any work done, can't focus, so after his last class is over he writes a note with an accursedly shaking hand that he's cancelling the rest of his office hours for the day and tapes it to his door. Then he goes home.

The first wash of relief comes when he steps inside his apartment and closes the door behind him. The second will come when he gets under the covers in his dark room and stays there in the quiet for a while, remembering to breathe. But first he needs to do something that he hates even more than skipping work.

He shoots Dean a text to cancel their plans for the evening, adding that he doesn't feel well. He can't explain the crab boil right now. It's a conversation he needs to have, he knows, but the problem is that when he isn't anxious he doesn't want to spend any time thinking about feeling anxious, and when he is anxious he isn't fit to explain it.

Dean texts back _No prob, u okay?_ And Cas is altogether too tired to be articulate, so he says _I'm fine,_ turns off all the lights and crawls into bed.

He wakes later to an all-too-brief feeling of release and relief. He just has time to realize it's because he's breathing slow and deeply without having to think about it, before his guts give an almighty lurch and the corset tightens around his chest again.

A loud buzzing sound cuts through his head. Phone. Text. And before he can reach for it, a faint knocking from elsewhere in the apartment.

He reaches out from under the covers for the phone. The text from Dean says _U in there?_ Cas squints at it, then scrolls back up. Texts from Dean going back a couple of hours say, _Mind if I swing by?_ and _Hey Cas_ and _Are you ok_ and _Srsly how sick are you_ and _I'll be there in a minute_ and _I'm at ur door._

Cas groans and rolls out of bed. He went to sleep fully clothed and he knows he looks like twice-rumpled hell as he pads to the front door in socked feet.

Dean's typing on his phone when Cas opens the door; he stops, looks up, lowers his hands. There's a plastic grocery bag on his arm. He looks a little too wide-eyed, almost a ghost of fear, but that fades as soon as he sees Cas. “Hey,” he says.

“Hello,” Cas rasps. “I'm sorry, I was asleep.”

Dean sticks his phone in his pocket. “No, sorry, I think I overreacted.”

“It's fine.” Cas is still groggy but he moves to the side to let Dean through, shutting the door behind him. Dean keeps a careful foot or so between them.

“You okay?” Dean asks, reaching out a hand to gingerly touch Cas' forehead.

Cas approximates a smile. “I'm not sick,” he says. “I just don't feel well.”

“Oh,” says Dean. “Not contagious?”

“Not contagious,” Cas confirms.

“Then c'mere,” says Dean, and pulls him into a hug. Cas snorts against his shoulder. “I brought you soup,” Dean adds, “because I'm a complete dumbass.”

“You're disgustingly considerate,” Cas mumbles.

They head through into the kitchen and Dean leaves his bag of cans on the counter. Then he stands, looking a little awkward and uncertain.

“You can stay,” Cas says quietly. “If you want. I just couldn't go out. Can't.”

“What's wrong?” Dean asks, and his voice is so earnest-low and undemanding that just those two words are Cas' undoing.

He can't help the way his face contorts when he cries. He's an ugly crier. He doesn't miss the flash of startled panic on Dean's face before he closes his eyes. Then Dean's hands are on his upper arms and he just fucking sobs like he's got nothing better to do.

His arms are locked over his middle in a self-hug but Dean hugs him over that, hands going from his arm to his back, rubbing up and down his spine. He hiccups tears into Dean's shirt.

When he finally regains some ability to breathe, he doesn't know how long it's been but his head is pounding and the kitchen light is like a hot poker through the eyes. He feels heavy and disgusting and not particularly less anxious than he was before. That's the problem with anxiety, or one of them: catharsis has no effect. The chemicals are still fucked.

He unclenches his arms enough to wind them around Dean's middle and pull him too close, too tight.

“What happened?” Dean asks quietly, somewhere above his head.

Cas swallows a few times until he's sure he can speak without sounding like death. “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing happened. This is just a thing that happens to me sometimes. Anxiety.”

Dean's quiet for a minute. “What do you mean?” he says slowly, clearly trying not to argue.

Cas sighs into his shirt. There's no avoiding the conversation now whether he's ready to have it or not. “Generalized anxiety disorder,” he says tiredly. “It just means I get on edge for no reason, panic for no reason. Nothing has to trigger it. I mean, some things can... social interaction, big crowds of people...”

“That, I get,” Dean says. Because Cas is not exactly a social butterfly, nor is he possessed of any particular social graces.

Cas huffs a sound that's vaguely laugh-like. “It's just brain chemistry, Dean,” he says. “It's my brain attacking me because it can't find the shutoff valve for my amygdala. The thing that processes fear.” He's too tired to try to explain it in any better detail.

“That is some serious bullshit,” Dean says after a long moment of consideration.

“Yes,” Cas agrees.

Dean sighs. Cas can feel it warm against his hair. “I want to help,” he says quietly. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Cas screws his face up against Dean's shoulder. “You're helping,” he says, voice a little thick again. “You brought soup.”

Dean makes a discontented sound.

Cas fists his hands in the back of Dean's shirt and repeats, putting all the forcefulness he can muster into it, “You're helping.”

Dean doesn't have anything to say to that.

Dean stays. They decant Campbell's into bowls and eat microwaved soup and crackers standing up in the kitchen. Cas declares that the placebo effect of traditional comfort foods must extend to easing ailments beyond merely the common cold. Dean objects that the curative power of tomato-rice soup is provable fact and "not any of that mind over matter b.s." Cas rolls his eyes and Dean decides that must mean he's already feeling better and that Dean's point has therefore been proved.

Dean chats and jokes, tone upbeat, and Cas is too tired to try to explain to him that Cas doesn't need cheering up, and that he can't be "cheered up" anyway, since his cheer is irrelevant to what's wrong. But his chest tightens in a way that doesn't have to do with the anxiety at the fact that Dean is _here_ , that he worried, that he cared, that he doesn't seem give a shit about staying in a dark apartment all night with a mostly-broken man and that he' trying so hard to make things better. Sometimes distraction is the only treatment that's worth a damn on one of Cas' bad days and Dean's doing all manner of good on that front.

He can't explain to Dean that Dean can't make the crushing feeling of doom and death and slithering oily fear go away, but he can drown them out. At least for a little while.

Dean stays the night. He undresses Cas in the dark and pulls him close in bed and kisses him slow and languorous and deep, and that's another distraction Cas can approve of. He runs his hand over Cas' thigh and asks if Cas wants this or if he's-, but Cas interrupts _yes, fuck, stop talking,_ and Dean wastes no time bringing them both off with his hand, pressed together.

Afterwards, the boiling pot slows with his heartbeat, and the spines dull and the heat fades. And maybe what's left is just butterflies. Just butterflies for now.

He holds Dean in the quiet and dark and doesn't know how to say thank you.

His eyes are heavy but the afternoon's nap keeps him coasting on wakefulness for a long time. Dean's breathing isn't steady enough to be sleep, either, but he shows no signs of moving or wanting to move. It isn't all that late yet, maybe nine. Cas can't be bothered to look at a clock.

Cas lets his thoughts drift into memory and at length a slow, broad smile steals over his face.

“I started crying on Balthazar once,” he says into the quiet.

Dean shifts. “Who?” He says. “Oh, the classy hooker.”

“While he was fucking me,” Cas adds.

After a considering pause, Dean starts laughing, a low rumbling chuckle that Cas can feel all the way through into his own lungs.

“You didn't,” Dean gasps.

“I'm not sure who was more traumatized,” Cas says serenely.

“I swear I will never get over the goddamn hooker named goddamn _Balthazar,"_ Dean wheezes.

Cas smiles into Dean's skin and lets sound wash over him. Today was one of the bad days but it was by far not one of the worst.


	2. Who Is The Knife

Who Is The Knife

 

_“This is a gift_  
It comes with a price  
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?” 

 

December 10

 

Cas pushes away from Dean's mouth and slides down to bite at his chest, suck hard on one nipple and graze it with his teeth. Dean bucks under him like he always does at that little ghost of pain, which is something Cas doesn't really like for himself but the fire it ignites under Dean's skin never ceases to amaze him. Cas runs his hands down Dean's sides to his hips, fingertips turned in so his short, bitten nails are just barely scratching skin.

The heavy, relentless percussion of _Kashmir_ is five minutes in and still four from over, a little tinny coming from Dean's phone. He'd been doing his best to convert Cas to the cult of Led Zeppelin after dinner. Cas was happy to be converted as long as Dean didn't have to speak or wear clothes.

“Fuck,” Dean breathes, canting his hips up, offering.

Cas hmms agreement. He gets a sizeable fold of flesh at the juncture of hip and thigh between his teeth and bites down slow, increasing the pressure until it has to hurt, moving one hand to stroke Dean's dick at the same time. Dean shudders under him and would probably object that the sound he makes is not a whimper, because Dean doesn't _whimper,_ but the fact is, he does. And Cas likes making him do it. He stops biting and laves his tongue over the spot instead, then moves his mouth to Dean's erection and settles a warm palm over the bite mark he leaves behind.

Dean sighs like the breath's been punched out of him when Cas starts sucking him. Cas shuffles his knees back on the comforter for a better angle, takes Dean down as far as he can go – he can't replicate Dean's throat trick. Tried once, ended up gagging and laugh-coughing, Dean cracking up along with him, until they were both breathless and distracted. But he knows how to use the hint of teeth over the vein along the bottom and just under the head to make Dean give a hoarse cry and buck up. Cas doesn't hold his hips down, just follows the movement with a head-bob.

He moves his hands down to press fingers into the soft flesh of Dean's inner thighs, palming over untanned skin. One hand goes to Dean's dick, tugs on his balls. The other he slides back and down until he's shoving his hand between Dean's skin and the comforter to knead at Dean's ass.

Dean's panting above him, bucking in erratic little jerks. Cas pulls off to raise his head and look at him, thumb idly moving up to press into Dean's perineum and slide-drag backwards.

Dean's eyes are closed, head pressed back into the pillow, and Cas would rather he was looking at him since he's putting in all this damn work. He moves the hand on Dean's balls up to tug his spit-slick cock a little too hard, sticks the first two fingers of his other hand in his mouth to get them wet and quickly goes back to sliding fingers on Dean's perineum, back, back, then pressing at his hole.

They've never talked about this, that Dean always tops even though he sometimes grinds Cas' erection into his crack or between his thighs like he really, really wants – like he's begging – but then he always stops that and moves on to something else, and Cas has noticed the furrow in his brow when he does. But he likes a little pain and he likes Cas playing around behind his balls while he's getting head. So Cas doesn't really mean to do anything more than that, because he knows he needs to ask Dean, to talk to him about this before he does anything else, but it's a failing on both their parts that they are frequently terrible at talking about what they want.

He sucks hard for a minute, fingers rubbing circles at Dean's hole, _Kashmir_ drumming to a crescendo and a denoument, then lifts again to look at Dean, who's breathing hard but hasn't made another sound. He's usually more vocal. The song changes and a different drumbeat picks up. _Black Dog._ Dean's breath hitches. Cas thumbs over the head of Dean's cock and breaches him with one fingertip, just for a moment, almost by accident.

Dean's eyes fly open and he jerks back, not in a good way. _“Stop,”_ he croaks, “stop, stop, God.” His voice is shaky.

Fear leaps up Cas' throat and tangles unpleasantly with arousal. He yanks his hands back as if scalded. Dean's scooting back, sitting up, reaching for the phone with a shaking hand, fumbling to turn the music off.

For a frozen moment in the sudden silence, all Cas can hear is his own pounding heart and Dean sucking in too-shallow breaths.

“Dean?” he finally ventures, so quiet it's almost a whisper.

Dean shuts his eyes and leans his head back against the headboard. Then thumps it there a couple of times. “Sorry,” he rasps. “I'm sorry.”

Cas hesitantly sits back on his heels, which puts even more space between them but he doesn't know if he can touch Dean right now. “Why?” he asks. “I was the one who went too far. I'm sorry, Dean, I should have...”

But Dean's shaking his head, brow drawn in tight, looking hurt and determined at once. “No, man, it's not you, it's just – the song, I forgot that song was on there, and then, uh.”

“I should have asked you,” Cas repeats, firm.

Dean sighs, still shaky. “It's my issue,” he says. “I'll deal with it. Just gimme a minute.”

But Cas shakes his head; the moment's over anyway, the arousal is gone, and even if it wasn't he wouldn't keep trying anything with Dean now. “If I do anything wrong,” he says, “please tell me.”

“You don't,” Dean says, so low, so quiet. He almost looks a little glassy, and can't meet Cas' eyes. “You never do anything wrong.”

Cas hesitantly puts one hand on Dean's knee and he doesn't flinch away. He doesn't look at Cas, either, though. Cas stays like that for an uncomfortable minute, uncertain if he should go for more contact or less.

Eventually he succumbs to his own nerves and takes his hand away. His feet are starting to go to sleep under him so he shifts to the side, swinging his legs out over the edge of the bed, trying to move with care and quiet as if Dean is an animal who might startle. He feels guilty, though for what he doesn't know, and he feels wretchedly like a monster for whatever he triggered in Dean, though he doesn't know what that is, either.

Miserable and yearning to understand, he stands up and bites the inside of his cheek. “I'm going to get some water,” he says at last, and when Dean doesn't nod, just keeps looking at the bedspread with half-lidded eyes, he leaves.

A minute later while he's standing at the kitchen sink and fighting down a surge of anxiety, Dean calls out from down the hall. “Cas, I'm gonna be in the shower.” Then silence.

Dean showers in the mornings and usually one more perfunctory filth-stripping shower after his shifts at the garage. If Cas feels gross enough after any particularly enthusiastic sex to shower the evidence off before bed, it's always him who drags Dean along, because Dean is a neanderthal who's perfectly willing to be sticky and itchy in the morning.

Cas is worried. That's an understatement. Cas is terrified.

He and Amelia had known all of each other's hangups and issues (the biggest being, of course, that they were mutually unattracted to each other physically, which made having sex an awkward and terrible experience all around), having grown up together. Cas had been the one to break down on Balthazar a couple of times, much to the older man's very flighty, very British panic and bewilderment.

So he's never done this, the void of someone else's unknown past stretching out in front of him like he's standing at the edge of a cliff, and what's scariest of all is how much he wants to jump. He wants to know, no matter what it is. He wants to help, no matter how.

And he realizes, then, that this must be how Dean feels when Cas is consumed with anxiety.

He gets two glasses of water and goes back to the bedroom, sets them both on the table. The shower's running. He goes cautiously to the bathroom door, opens it wide enough to stand on the threshold. There's such a powerful billowing of steam, from only a couple of minutes of running, that Cas knows the water has to be scorching-hot.

He pushes the door to behind him and pads over the tile to the wavy-glass shower door. “Dean,” he says, not wanting to startle, then cracks the door just enough to see inside.

Dean's not doing anything, just leaning one shoulder against the wall in the pounding water, looking unfocused at the tiles in front of him. His skin is already turning pink with the abusive temperature.

Cas repeats his name quietly.

“'M okay,” Dean says.

“Do you want me to come in there?”

Dean half-shrugs.

Cas hesitates, utterly unsure if touch is something he should give or avoid, if Dean's lost in memory or pain or something more like Cas' own razor-winged butterflies of anxiety.

But he thinks about how much it helps when Dean holds him and gives him a place to just stop thinking when panic is overwhelming him, so he finally makes up his mind and steps into the shower, clicking the door closed behind him.

The water is scalding. He edges it down a fraction, so it's still hot – uncomfortably hot – but not likely to cause actual damage. Dean shifts against the wall, pushes himself away from it so he's standing on his own power, and a troubled expression finally starts to overcome the blankness. “Cas,” he mutters.

Cas turns them so the water's hitting Dean's back, then presses up against Dean and wraps his arms around him.

Dean's arms come up after a minute to drape loosely around his waist. And the longer they stand there, the more Dean's arms tighten. Cas feels it when he balls his hands into fists against Cas' shoulders.

Dean doesn't cry, or at least not audibly. Cas runs his hand up Dean's back in the hot spray, comes up over the back of Dean's neck and rubs fingers firm into hard trapezius muscle until Dean starts to relax.

When they get out of the shower, Dean doesn't resist while Cas towels his hair. He pats himself down the rest of the way while Cas goes and gets two sets of his oldest, most worn-soft sleep shirts and drawstring pants. They're so worn out and stretched with wear that even though Dean is a little broader in the shoulders and taller, the clothes fit fine.

Looking more vulnerable than ever dressed in Cas' clothes, skin still hot to the touch from the shower, Dean climbs back into the bed without a word. He takes one of the glasses of water and drains it in long swallows. Cas hovers. Dean finally puts the glass down and pulls the edge of the blanket back in clear invitation. Which is funny, or should be funny, because it's Cas' own bed, but Cas wouldn't have thought twice about sleeping on the sofa if that's what Dean needed.

Dean's the one who pushes close, pulls Cas' arm over his waist and insinuates himself all up into Cas' personal space. Cas settles in without argument, without speech. After a bit Dean stills, and all there is is breathing. The lamp on the bedside table is still on but Cas isn't sure if this is going to turn into sleep yet, anyway. He doesn't think it is.

At long last, Dean takes a deep breath. Cas can feel his chest expanding with it. “I need to tell you some things,” he says.

His face is turned slightly down so he's talking to Cas' collarbone. Cas doesn't try to get a better look at his face, just inches forward so his breath gusts over Dean's hair, creating a dark bubble of space under his chin where Dean can tell his secrets in safety.

“You don't need to tell me anything,” Cas says.

“Okay, Mr. Semantics,” Dean mumbles. But then he goes on. “I want to... I mean, I don't want to tell you. But I want you to know.”

Cas nods. Dean can't see it but he must guess the motion.

For another good while Dean is quiet. Gathering thoughts. Then he starts talking, voice normal, even.

“Sam and I are four years apart,” he says. “So there was a year when we were both in high school, senior and freshman. We'd been in that town for about six months, maybe longer. It was the longest we'd stayed in one place for a while and Sam was excited about maybe starting school there and staying in one place for the whole four years. And that was... I guess that was the thing that started it, Sam being excited about school. Because he was just hitting serious puberty, going from this scrawny-ass thirteen-year-old to this... still scrawny but like, six-foot beanpole scrawny fourteen-year-old. He fuckin' _shot_ up. And he was just starting to fight with Dad, really fight, 'cause he was old enough and big enough, finally.

“Dad was messed up. I know that. He didn't know what he wanted for us. I think he didn't know how to deal with us growing up and going away, because if he didn't have us then his whole paranoid guerilla lifestyle fell apart. He was so convinced he was protecting us from, I don't know. Sometimes he just said bad people, sometimes he said demons and the devil. He'd pick up stakes and move us with an hour's notice because he'd get positive he'd seen a man with yellow eyes following Sammy around. Dad was, I mean, he was so fucked up. I know.”

Dean breathes for a minute.

“Sam was sympathetic, I think, but he couldn't live like that, he wanted out. He wanted Dad to get help, too, he did love him, but mostly he wanted out. He was already looking at colleges, years off. And I argued him down a lot, said Dad was doing the best he could, that a lot of other dads didn't care at all so maybe it wasn't so bad that our dad cared too much. But Sam wanted to go to school and just stay in one damn place for more than a few months, and I couldn't argue with that.

“I was a senior that year... I wasn't thinking about college, really. I thought a lot about Sam going to college but I didn't think I was gonna go. Didn't have the money, didn't see the point in trying to get the money. Figured I'd just work. But Sam and Dad fighting all the time kinda took all eyes off me, and I was thinkin' about how I was going to be out of school and an adult and freaking out about it. I'd never thought about leaving Dad alone, I never had. I didn't want him to be alone. But I didn't know how the hell to live with him anymore.

“That's... I did some dumb shit that year, Cas. I did a lot of dumb shit. No one was really paying attention. I drank a lot. It was a college town and I went to parties with kids older than me and drank a lot there. Slept around. Caught some embarrassing shit, had to do the walk of shame to the nurse's office. You know, kinda basic. Seemed rebellious at the time.

“It was... at a party.” A tiny waver of uncertainty creeps into Dean's voice. This is the point. Cas presses his hand a little more firmly into Dean's back. Dean takes a breath, then another. “I met a man at a party,” he says again, steadier. “There were a couple of girls and we were all sharing a joint, and this guy comes up and just inserts himself in the group, you know how some people are good at that. He was good at suddenly existing in places where no one had invited him or really wanted him. And he was kinda sleazy, but in that smooth, butter-wouldn't-melt way, and he was handsy. And I was horny. And high. And he said he was gonna teach us how to shotgun, and he took the joint and got a big puff and kissed me. Or just... held my head and forced the blowback, really, so hard I couldn't breathe.”

Dean takes another deep breath. If anything he seems to huddle smaller against Cas' front, head tucking further into the cave of Cas' throat.

“He went by Alastair, like the Satanist. He knew how to push buttons. After the first few times he pulled my hair too hard or whatever, he'd figured out that I liked pain. And I'd... been having sex for a couple years already, but I thought I was, I dunno, ready to graduate to some real adult shit. And that seemed like exactly the place I wanted to go, the drug I really wanted. He pegged that about me and dug at it until I was letting him do stuff to me I never would've thought about a month before. And I liked it, _fuck,_ I was having a great fucking time.” His voice is tinged bitter now.

“I told him way too much about myself. Way too much. It was like writing down all my nuke codes and just handing them over. I knew Dad would have a coronary if he knew and that was probably part of why. Sammy was getting straight A's and I wasn't at school half the time. I did other drugs, not that often, I never really liked that. No needles. But I was always around Alastair, it was always him getting me to try stuff, and I'd say yes every goddamn time. I don't know how I didn't get hurt that way. I don't know...”

He sighs. His breath is warm against Cas' clavicle.

“He was into scening,” he continues quietly. “Went to a club a lot and took me there. The Cage. Not like that goofy fuckin' movie Birdcage, but like, cage-cage. The décor was something else, meathooks hanging from the ceiling and shit. Red walls. One of 'em had a fountain, one of those sheet fountain things, so the water over the red looked like the wall was bleeding. It was a seriously fucked up place. When we started going there was probably when I started getting scared. But I talked myself into it, I figured I was just adjusting to what I wanted. And I was still getting off. A lot. The rooms in the back were less with the gory shit. I convinced myself it wasn't weird.

“So... once he started tying me up, it changed. Or it didn't change, but I started to realize how bad it'd been to start with. Because I'd never worried too much about the physicality of it, because I was bigger than Alastair. He was just this bony, skinny guy and I'd been on my last school's wrestling team and I coulda played football if I'd given a crap about it. I figured if I let him hurt me, it was – letting him. I coulda stopped it. But when I couldn't move and _then_ he was hurting me, I started to wonder if I ever actually could've stopped it. I started wondering what would happen if I tried to say no, 'cause I hadn't ever done it.

“So I kept saying yes, but it started to be because I didn't think he'd listen if I said no and I was scared to find out. I found out the hard way that he'd keep going even if I wasn't getting off. He'd make me get undressed in the car and walk through the club naked to get to the back. The people who worked there wore these latex masks, these distorted demon faces. I fucking hated being looked at.

“Sometimes I'd be tied up and blindfolded and he'd leave for a while and then, you know, I'd be getting touched again, but after a couple times I started to think that it wasn't even him. Anyone could've come in the room and I couldn't tell. I spent so much time telling myself that this was what this whole scene was about, that submitting was about taking whatever they gave you and that if you weren't afraid you weren't doing it right.”

He's talking a little too fast now. He stops to swallow, to breathe. Cas' throat is tight and his chest burns but he doesn't interrupt and doesn't make a sound. He won't let himself examine his own feelings until Dean's done.

“This whole thing happened over four months,” Dean says, a little hoarse now. “It felt like a lot longer, but it started in the winter and went down the toilet so goddamn fast I barely knew what hit me. It was... it ended about a month or less before the end of the school year, when Sammy was getting ready for exams. I'd tried to tell Alastair I was sick a couple times, to get out of going anywhere with him, but I'd already told him so goddamn much he'd just show up at my house and wait around in the shadows until I saw him. I knew it was a threat. It meant he'd come to the door if I didn't go to him, and I couldn't let Dad and Sam know. I couldn't. So I'd go.

“The last time... the last time he got me to the club he said he was giving me a reward. And I'd got to where his praise scared me just as much as his anger. Not that he really got angry, he just got – cold, and he'd say he was teaching me. But this time he was being nice and it was fucking terrifying.

“I let him get me pretty drunk cause sometimes that made it easier to get into things. And he didn't tie my hands or hold my wrists behind my back like he usually did, he just led me to the back still dressed and I didn't know what the hell was going on.”

“So he says 'close your eyes,'” Dean says, so quiet now. His voice cracks. “And I went through a door and he says open em. And there's a kid tied to the bed.”

He stops. Cas' heart is pounding and he wants to say something, anything, but there isn't anything to say. He bites the inside of his cheek and tells himself he won't push, even if Dean can't go on.

He can. He does. “Young,” he croaks. “Younger than me. Like Sam's age. Way too fuckin' young to be there. No goddamn way he was legal. And Alas-” He stops again. Chokes down a breath, now definitely thick with unshed tears. “He said, show me what you've learned.”

Then his shoulders heave. It's almost silent, the way he breaks. He digs fingers into Cas' skin hard enough to really hurt, probably enough to bruise, but Cas stays quiet and holds on. His own heart is thundering and his eyes burn, but he holds it in, he wants to be still, he wants to be the rock Dean needs him to be.

“The kid was hard, you know, but he was gagged and blindfolded and shaking. I had no idea if he was drugged or if he'd – if he even wanted to be there.” Dean's gasping it out, determined. “And I wasn't gonna – I _wouldn't –”_

“I know you wouldn't,” Cas rasps out. “You'd never.”

“All I could think about was Sammy,” Dean sobs.

It's a long time before he can speak again. Cas' headache blooms and his ribs hurt. He does cry some, into Dean's hair, but he tries to be quiet about it.

When Dean's breathing a little more normally, Cas whispers, “What did you do?”

Dean takes a few shaky breaths, steadier each time. He sounds almost serene when he answers, detached. “I decked Alastair so hard I broke my fucking hand.”

And then, improbably, he laughs. It's wet and humorless and his whole body jerks with it like the sound itself electrocuted him.

“Then I ran,” he says. “Ran the fuck out of there like a little bitch.”

“Good,” Cas murmurs. He doesn't know what else to say.

“I left that kid there, Cas,” Dean says miserably. “I coulda fought for him. I still have nightmares about what they musta done to him in there. And of course in my dreams he's Sam, y'know, of course he fuckin' is.”

Cas can't hold on and tighter but he presses his mouth into dean's hair. “You got out,” he says, muffled. “You had to get yourself out.”

“Yeah, I, uh,” Dean croaks, and coughs. It takes him a minute to speak again. “I ran as far as I could, I didn't know where I was going, the club was out to the edge of town. I finally got my shit together and found a pay phone and called the cops.”

This surprises Cas. “You did?”

“On the club,” Dean clarifies. “I didn't know if they'd bust the place on anything else, so I told'm about the drugs I knew about. I always figured there were more somewhere. Maybe they raided the place and found em. When they asked my name I hung up. Never checked back to see what happened.”

Dean takes another deep breath... finally steady again, finally even. He sniffs hard, phlegmy. “Then I was, uh... I was scared as hell, still kinda drunk. And I realized Alastair knew where I lived. And I didn't know a goddamn thing about the guy except that he was a sadistic son of a bitch, and I had no idea what he'd do, how far he'd go. He knew about Sam. He knew everything that could really hurt me.

“He'd picked me up so I didn't have a car. Stole one to get home 'cause I was afraid he'd beat me there if I tried to walk it. Then I, uh.”

He stops, breathes hard through his nose. He lets go of Cas' back, finally, drags his hands to himself and pushes away. Rolls onto his back, movements arthritically stiff. Cas finally sees his face. So red-eyed and swollen it looks like he's been in a fight. His skin shines with tears and cold sweat.

“I went in the apartment and woke up Dad,” he says, full of disgust and self-loathing, “and told him I'd seen the yellow-eyed demon and that we had to leave, right then. Showed him my bust hand so he'd believe me.”

He lies there staring at the ceiling for a while, while Cas attempts to process. Cas slowly raises his hand to his own face and scrubs salt crust from his eyes.

“Dad was so fucking sick,” Dean says. “And I used it like that.”

“Dean,” Cas says.

“Sam was so pissed,” Dean goes on. “He knew it was a lie. He kept yelling at me to tell the truth the whole time Dad packed shit and I stood at the window with a shotgun, watching the door. He'd miss the end of the school year... and I was just waiting for...

“I just, I knew it was coming, I knew – he'd come there. I thought he was gonna kill me if he found me. I thought he was gonna kill Sammy. I couldn't fight him, I didn't want to fight him. I wanted him to be dead but I didn't want to fight him.”

He stops again, and this time Cas senses finality.

They lie there in silence. Cas can hear the faint electric hum of appliances. The central heat kicks on. After a while, it dies off again. Cas' head is killing him and he feels like he's been hit by a truck. He can't begin to imagine how Dean feels in comparison.

“Does Sam know anything?” Cas finally asks.

“No,” Dean sighs. “Christ, no. I've never told anyone.”

And if Cas didn't think it was possible to feel any more steamrolled, he has to take that thought back. The only way his body can come up with to cope with being this overwhelmed is to flood him with nausea. It's not at all helpful or condusive to coming up with something appropriate to say.

“I mean, Sam knows something bad happened. Something real bad. I think he's forgiven me for the exams thing. Maybe. He got into the next school just fine. They let him do some kinda makeup exams in the summer so he didn't have to repeat a year.”

Cas' internal mute button still seems to be stuck.

“Three years later Dad died...” Dean sighs, now seeming to be talking to himself, just recounting facts, painting a timeline. “Heart attack. March before Sam graduated high school. Me n' Sam went on a roadtrip after. Just lived in the car for a year. Then Sammy still wanted to go to college... when he was younger he had his eyes on Harvard or even going abroad, just, shooting for the moon. But Ellen and Bobby were here, and we had to come back to family in the end. He didn't have any problem getting into Stanford. Got a scholarship.” The pride in his voice is so raw it stings Cas almost as badly as the grief and the fear.

Cas can't get his voice working at all. He finally has to push up onto an elbow and reach for the untouched glass of water on the bedside table, take a few careful swallows to pull himself back together. He offers the half-empty glass to Dean, who takes it and pulls himself upright to finish it off.  
Dean pulls his legs towards himself so he's sitting nearly Indian-style, leaning against the pillows. He still looks wrecked, but not quite so haunted.

Cas clears his throat. “So since then you haven't...” he suggests, trailing off. Trying to bring the conversation full circle.

Dean glances at him. “Nah, I um. I have. During that road trip, I was trying to work out a lot of crap. Fixed a lot of things that had gone wrong between me'n Sam, so it was worth it. But yeah, I was trying to fix that, too, or just – make it go away, make it not have meant anything. So I let a guy fuck me in one of those fleabag pay-by-the-hour motels. Not one of my finest moments. Tryin'a prove something to myself, I guess.”

Cas nods slowly.

“It was terrible,” Dean adds. “Big shocker. At least he wasn't a dick about it. Said he was sorry, blew me after.” He sighs. “It isn't the act, so much, just the uh. I dunno, the feeling trapped. I'm not great at being able to tell what's gonna get to me. One time it was just 'cause I was in a bathroom in some diner and the door stuck for a minute. Thought I couldn't get out.”

Cas is hit with the unexpected memory of the assembly hall of the church, boys in white shirts rank and file, and how he would stand there frozen, looking past all those well-groomed heads towards the door and feeling utterly unable to move even though no one was holding him back. But if he'd run – he didn't know what would've happened.

“I understand,” he says softly, and hopes Dean believes that he means it.

“Yeah,” Dean mutters. “I guess it's like your thing, just, 'cause of something I did instead of something I was born with.”

Cas twitches. “No,” he says sharply. “Because of something that was done to you.”

Dean looks at him, level and certain. “I said yes so many times, Cas,” he says. “I decided to let him into my life.”

Cas shakes his head harder than he means to. The echoes of sermons fill his mind. “You didn't,” he says. “You didn't _let_ him, anymore than I decided for myself that everyone in the world was going to hell. A yes doesn't mean anything if you can't say no.”

Dean looks away. Cas can't read his expression anymore. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand and sniffs heavily. “I feel disgusting,” he mutters. He swings his legs off the side of the bed. “Gonna go blow my nose.”

Cas takes the time he's gone to the bathroom to go to the kitchen and refill both water glasses. He stands over the sink for a minute and lets cold water sluice over his hands until his fingers start to hurt. He scrubs a hand over his face, rubbing cold into sore eyes.

When he goes back to the bedroom Dean is just tossing back something from his palm. He offers the bottle of Advil to Cas, who silently trades him for a glass of water.

They sit separate on the bed, Cas nursing his glass and still unsure if touch is wanted or welcome. Dean lets his knees fall so that his leg is just touching Cas'.

“All this time without telling anyone,” Cas says slowly, carefully. He doesn't want to ask “why me?” because he's afraid he either knows the answer – or he doesn't.

“You're the first person I'd rather knew than didn't,” Dean says.

Cas is quiet for a while. Then, low, “Thank you.”

Dean gives a little half-shrug but his knee presses to Cas' more firmly. He leans back on the headboard and looks to the ceiling. “I still like what I like. That's messed up. I'm messed up.” He shakes his head.

“No,” says Cas.

Dean looks down again. “And he ruined a Zep song,” he says, forcefully offended. “If there wasn't already enough evidence that he was the devil incarnate.”

“That is cruel and unusual,” Cas murmurs.

“There was this _slimy_ little British guy,” Dean says, broad and expressive with his hands again, and Cas knows he's deflecting but lets him do it anyway. “Always looked at people like he was trying to decide how much they'd cost at auction. I think he was a business partner. He always had this fuck-off massive Rott with him and sometimes he'd leave it in the room with me while he and Alastair went off to talk shop. That thing was not fuckin' family-friendly. And Alastair'd come back and be like 'make a new friend?'” He affects a dry, nasal, Brando-ish voice. “Thought it was funny to put on _Black Dog_ and crank it to eleven.”

“Why do you still have it on your phone?”

Dean nearly growls, “Exposure therapy. Bastard is _not_ taking _any part_ of Zep IV away from me.”

Cas can't help but smile.

Dean huffs a great sigh and thunks his head back against the board. “So there ya go,” he says. “The story of Dean Winchester, high school dropout with six bucks to his name.”

“You didn't finish school?”

“Wasn't ever _at_ school enough to finish it. Got my GED couple years later for the pay raise that came with it,” Dean shrugs. He waves one hand dismissively. “So that's what I was off doing while you were living the apple pie life.”

At that, Cas shoots him a withering glare. “While I was hating myself,” he corrects sharply, “and lying to everyone I loved.”

Dean looks over at him, contrite. “Sorry.”

Cas can't be angry, not really. But he does scowl and add, “And while I wasn't getting any that was worth getting, and couldn't keep it up unless I was constantly thinking about Brad Pitt.”

Dean barks a startled laugh. “Come on, no, Brad Pitt?”

“What?”

“That's too easy,” Dean says. He's grinning now, an easy, soft expression that makes Cas unknot a little. “I bet it was, like, Meet Joe Black Brad Pitt, too, where it's all suits and sad anime eyes and just talk, talk, talk, god that movie was boring.”

“Troy,” Cas says curtly.

Dean makes an appreciative noise. “Okay, better,” he says. “The whole short skirts and too much bronzer thing.”

“It was a butchery of the Iliad,” Cas says, crossing his arms, “but it did have Pitt's naked ass for about half a second, so I'll give it that.”

“Dude,” says Dean, “do you watch Game of Thrones?”

“No.” Cas is only vaguely aware of what that even is.

 _“Oberyn Martell,”_ Dean says, leaning towards Cas like he's imparting the most important secret in the universe. “And his girlfriend,” he adds, thoughtfully.

Cas snorts.

“We are so watching Game of Thrones,” Dean says. “And god damn, Khal Drogo. We are watching Game of Thrones _yesterday.”_

Cas laughs, rolling his head back against the headboard. He ends up looking at Dean, who meets his eyes. Cas' smile falters, just for a moment.

“Are you all right?” he asks, unable to help himself.

Dean's jaw tics and he flicks his eyes to the side in the laziest possible effort at a roll. “If you're gonna start treating me like a delicate flower, tell me now so I can go ahead and break up with you.”

Cas' smile settles back in to stay. Adopting a tone of idle interest, he says, “One of the rarest and most difficult to cultivate flowers is the _rafflesia arnoldii,_ which is called the corpse flower and attracts flies to carry its pollen by emitting a smell like -”

“Ugh,” Dean laughs, rolling his head away again and scrunching up his nose. “How do you _know_ this shit.”

“I am a curious person,” Cas deadpans. “Did you know that a cat's penis is sharply barbed along its shaft -”

“Oh my god,” Dean says, rolling out of bed and stomping out to the living room. Cas laughs after him.

A moment later Dean returns and all but throws Cas' laptop on the bed before throwing himself down nearly as hard. Cas barely arrests the laptop's slide and gets a heavy sideful of shoving, full-body-contact Dean for his effort. Dean arranges Cas how he wants and Cas lets him, a laughing, willing puppet. Cas ends up propped by all the pillows, Dean in front of him and to the side in a sort of diagonal sprawl, reclining along Cas' chest with his arms free to work the laptop resting on Cas' knees.

“Dean,” Cas says, resting his arms along Dean's shoulders, figuring that two can play at treating each other as furniture.

“It's only eight o'clock,” Dean says. “Come on, like, two episodes.”

“I don't own...”

“The power of piracy, Cas,” Dean says seriously.

Cas sighs. “If you kill my computer,” he says, shaking his head.

Dean stretches over him to flick off the bedside lamp.

\---

 

December 14

 

When fall semester ends they squeeze in episodes in the brief periods between Dean being at work or sleeping. Cas has a lot of extra free time but 'tis the season for holiday drunks to crowd the Roadhouse and Southern Californians in general to not know how to keep a car running when the temperature is below 40 degrees. It seems like Dean's always at one job or the other.

“You could watch it without me,” Dean says grudgingly when an episode ends on a miserable cliffhanger but it's too late for another. “I've seen it already.”

Cas tells him he is very kind and very stupid and kisses him.

“So, am I better fantasy material than a half-second of Brad Pitt's naked ass?” Dean grins, crawling over him.

“I don't know,” Cas says into his mouth. “How many Oscars has your ass won?”

\---

 

December 20

 

“Are we ever going to meet Stannis?”

“Cas, you will not make me spoil things, no matter how much you ask.”

“I just find the Baratheon brothers' relationship interesting. Is there going to be some sort of flashback episode to the war that's always being referred to, or -”

“Cas, will you – look, there is a blowjob happening on screen _right now_ and this is what you're talking about.”

“Yes, I know HBO has to fulfill its quota of softcore pornography per episode but it does seem to be at the expense of plot questions I would like to see addressed.”

“Christ, you better be glad I like you. Shut up and watch the damn show.”

\---

 

December 22

 

“Sam's gonna be back from Jess' place tonight.”

“Why, wasn't the point of him going with her to do Christmas with her family?”

“No, well, kinda, he wasn't gonna stay through Christmas Day anyway. Apparently her family is so massive he's barely gotten to spend five minutes with her. So he's heading home a couple days early with her blessing. He said he thinks he made a good impression on her parents.”

“Good.”

“So what're your Christmas plans?”

“... I don't have any. Ames and Claire went with Roger to visit his parents and sister.”

“Come on, seriously?”

“I'll exchange gifts with them when they get back. And I'm sure we'll Skype on the day itself.”

“Come over.” Dean says it impulsively but with the total assurance of the incurably charismatic. “It'll just be me'n Sam spiking the eggnog too much 'n burning cornbread stuffing out of a box 'n eating enough peppermint bark to give diabetes to a small country. We can binge Thrones season 2 all day.”

Everything inside Cas is careening out of control.

“Okay,” he says.

\---

 

January

 

“I can't believe you betrayed me, Cas.”

Cas puts his finger over his spot and looks up. “What?”

“Should never have let you and Sam start geeking together.”

“Dean, these books have been out for over a decade,” Cas says reasonably. “And I'm not watching ahead without you. I'm just interested in all the extraneous details. The thought put into the coats of arms alone is quite astonish-”

“Oh,” says Dean, rolling onto his face and pulling a pillow over his head, “my God. I'm going to kill Sam.”

Cas grins fondly at his neck.

“I'm beginning to have suspicions about Jon Snow's parentage,” he says conversationally. “A couple of theories could apply...”

\---

 

February

 

“Happy late birthday, Dean.”

It's a rust-red t-shirt with a stylized gold lion on it. “Is this Gryffindor or Lannister?” Dean asks, grinning. Tyrion is his favorite character, after Margaery's breasts.

“Lannister,” says Cas, flipping to the back where a bold serif font reads _Hear Me Roar._ “You are _entirely_ a Hufflepuff.”

“Why you-”

\---

 

March

 

Cas absently pulls at a thread in the hem of his gray shirt with the howling wolf on the front, fully entranced by the television.

“Worth the wait?” Dean mumbles into his neck. They're sprawled together on the sofa, season 4 DVD box on the coffee table.

“I think I'm in love,” Cas murmurs.

“You're gonna leave me for Oberyn's accent,” says Dean, and Cas can hear him grinning.

“Hell no,” says Cas. “You're coming too. That is a sandwich I want in the middle of.”

Dean laughs so much they have to pause the show. It stays paused for a long time on a still of a craggy, handsome face looking sternly out across the living room while they make a valiant but futile effort to actually stay _on_ the sofa while furiously making out.

\---

 

April

Cas slides into the passenger seat of the Impala, only slightly breathless.

“You're _old,”_ Dean croons.

“Shut up,” says Cas.

“Do I get to spank you thirty times?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You gonna spank _me_ thirty times?”

“Negotiable. My arm would get tired. Drive, we'll be late.”

“You're the senior citizen who slept all afternoon.”

Cas glares. “You tampered with my phone. I know I set that alarm.”

Dean gives him a wicked look. “Maybe I want you to be awake all night.”

Cas just narrows his eyes.

Dean laughs and reaches down to shuffle through the box of tapes in the floorboard.

“Your car has a _tape deck,”_ Cas says. “You don't get to call me old.”

Dean scoffs, shoves in a tape, turns it up and starts drumming on the wheel. It takes a minute for Cas to place the song, though he knows it sounds familiar.

 _“Gonna make you burn, gonna make you sting,”_ Dean falsettos, scrunching up his face in an effort to match Robert Plant.

Cas leans back in the seat, hands fisting inside his coat pockets, chest unexpectedly tight, and listens to Dean utterly fail to keep up with the shifting time signatures of the drum track. He thinks he won't mind being dragged into Gabriel's idea of a birthday celebration so much as long as Dean's there.

 

 

Spoiler: Cas' birthday present is sex. His Christmas present was also sex. Dean's not that imaginative with gift ideas. Cas and Sam start gifting each other books, much to Sam's relief. One time Dean tries writing “from Dean” on one of the wrapped books and Sam is like “Nice try, asswipe, this is from Cas.”

“You don't know, maybe I've been practicing my active listening skills.”

“Dude, it's Cas' _copy._ It's got C. N. and an office inventory number in the cover.”

“You don't know, maybe I stole it.”

“... Actually that seems likely. I'm gonna call Cas to see if he actually meant to give this to me or not.”

Thus go holidays.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometime in January

 

Sam is unrepentant about lending Castiel the Ice and Fire books. Dean bitches and whines at every opportunity that Cas now does this thing – the same thing Sam does – where every time Dean says something mildly speculative, Cas freezes for a moment and looks into the middle distance, calculating.

“And he's always talking about shit like the state of the roads and crops, or the rural economy, or how important Howland fucking Reed is.”

Sam looks up from his notes. “Oh, yeah, I should ask him about that,” he says. “I mean, you know Howland Reed is literally the only character left alive who knows exactly what happened in the war against the mad king, right? He's gotta be important.”

“Fuck Howland Reed,” Dean moans. “It's bad enough he doesn't appreciate Dany's tits.”

“You are the worst,” says Sam, but it's fond. He goes back to his notes.

When the new season starts, there's a brief spell of awkward communication - or lack thereof - having to do with the fact that they all three want to watch it but aren't sure what the etiquette is on watching it together. Sam's brain keeps going to bleach-worthy mental places about being in the same room with his brother, his brother's booty call, and HBO levels of t&a. On the other hand, Cas seems to be watching an entirely different show from Dean – the same show Sam's watching, a medieval political drama and philosophical musing on the nature of power. Dean's watching a really complicated and plotty soap/softcore porn mashup with funny costumes.

But it seems so overwhelmingly stupid to watch it separately when they all happen to end up with that night off from work or homework. When Sam gets in from a study group late that afternoon, he finds the kitchen counter piled with grocery bags – Dean's favorite junk, the low-fat bagged popcorn Cas likes (to Dean's endless chagrin), pretzels for Sam. And beer, surprising no one, but also a case of hard cider, which Sam eyeballs with confusion because Dean ranks cider up there with Smirnoff Ice in the realm of Would Not Be Caught Dead Purchasing. Sam's tried to convince him that cider is one of the oldest fermented drinks in human history and therefore does not lose him any dude points, but it's made of a fruit and therefore, in Dean's mind, Fruity.

Cas rounds the corner out of the hallway as Sam's swinging his bag off onto the kitchen table. Cas heads on into the kitchen with a passing greeting.

When Cas emerges from the fridge with a thing of yogurt and goes hunting for a spoon, Sam catches his eye and lifts a bottle of cider from the pack with a raised eyebrow.

Cas smiles and pulls the foil off the yogurt. “Consider it thematic,” he says.

“Don't get me wrong, I like cider,” says Sam, “but I've never gotten Dean to buy any in my entire life.”

“Yes,” Cas says serenely. “You don't have Lysistrata leverage. It was worthy of a Greek comedy, too. A passing mother covered her child's ears and a clerk nearly threw Dean out.”

Sam goes pink but almost – almost – wishes he had been there to see that.

Cas is altogether too pleased with himself and Dean, when he finally appears, is apparently still so scandalized by the event that he gives Cas a death glare all the way across the kitchen. Cas smiles brightly.

Sam can't resist needling. “You're so adorable when you're all butthurt,” he tells Dean.

Dean grumbles something like “yeah we'll see whose butt hurts,” and Sam punches him in the shoulder hard enough to make him curse and punch back.

Cas stays well out of the physical violence but seems unperturbed as he goes to the living room to steal the best space on the sofa.

They argue about dinner, mock half an hour of one of those hunting reality shows, and variously read the internet, play Angry Birds, and kick each others' feet off the coffee table. For all the ways in which Castiel is obviously uncomfortable with social situations, he has become, over the months, easier and more comfortable here with Sam and Dean than Sam has seen him anywhere else. Sam is oddly pleased about that, a feeling of personal moral accomplishment, like they adopted Cas from the pound and gave him a better home. Not that that's a metaphor he will ever voice out loud, ever.

Eventually Dean demands that they put on last season's finale before the new episode comes on. Sam shuts his laptop and grabs snacks and drinks – one beer, two ciders.

“Et tu, Sammy?” Dean grouses.

Sam clinks bottlenecks with Cas. The cider is dry and tart and cold and delicious, and Dean's a dumbass.

Unfortunately, at that point, Sam's fears start to be realized. It only takes twenty minutes for there have been enough boobs and asses on screen to make Dean shifty – which Sam has long learned to ignore, and would be able to now if Dean weren't being shifty in Cas' direction. Cas is clearly not interested in HBO's ratings-fishing, but plenty interested in Dean's attention.

Sam leans heavily on his arm of the sofa, away from his brother. Dean's in the middle since Cas stole the comfortable, crushed-soft with overuse seat at the end. There's a growing space between Sam and Dean and it's not all Sam's doing.

Ten minutes from the end of the episode, however, Dean's head is abruptly shoved back in Sam's direction. Sam risks a glance over – he'd been pointedly keeping his eyes on the screen, shielding himself to the side with his half-raised bag of pretzels.

Cas is the culprit behind the shoving. “What?” Dean all but whines.

“I wouldn't want you to inadvertently taste cider,” Cas says sweetly, and tips back his bottle to finish it. He gets up to get another.

Dean is mutinous and Sam cackles at him.

The season premiere, when it starts, is much better, because Dean's more invested in the screen than groping. Sam does glance sidelong at one point and all he can see is Cas' arm thrown over the backrest, hand resting lightly on the back of Dean's head, idly combing through a patch of already-spiky hair.

Sam is quite positive he isn't ever this disgustingly affectionate with Jess. Well, okay, maybe sometimes. Not right next to other people! Probably, that he can remember off the top of his head. Wait, what if Jess wants him to be more affectionate, though? What if she thinks he's distant? Wait, no, she practically sat in his lap at study group the other day and that's as PDA as it gets. Except that was just because they couldn't fit another chair at the table. Right?...

This is pathetic. The healthiness of _Dean's_ relationship is making him question his own. That isn't right. That's terrifying, that's got to be a sign of the end times.

Sam gets up to use the bathroom during a commercial and comes back to a glimpse of Dean pulling away from Cas' face and licking his lower lip.

“Ugh,” Sam says loudly, and stomps into the kitchen for a beer. Dean makes a rude noise in his direction.

At the end of the night, after the episode is over and the snacks are done in and there's only a handful of bottles left in the fridge, Dean leaves to go home with Cas. He musses Sam's hair when he stands, tells Sam he's going with that same old half-questioning tone, that 'I'll drop everything and stay if you say the word' tone. Sam hates that tone, because he wants Dean to just _take_ things for himself sometimes, without apology, without asking Sam's permission. Sam's sure he doesn't realize he's doing it.

Sam leaves the TV on some random late-night talkshows to fill the apartment with noise. He thinks what's growing between Dean and Castiel is great. It's amazing, it's – _healthy,_ which Sam never thought he would live to see the day, to be honest. But in the course of Cas moving more into their lives, Dean's also moved a little more out of Sam's, and that's been kind of hard.

He will never breathe a _word_ of this to Dean. He lives in terror of Dean noticing anything slightly off about his mood and abandoning Cas full-throttle to mother hen Sam for the rest of his life. It's frustrating, this act, holding his breath and keeping perfectly still like Dean's an animal who'll spook if change doesn't come slowly and painlessly enough. It's not that Sam wants him around 24/7 – the exact opposite, in fact; he's been loving all this strings-free alone time – but it's just an uncomfortable adjustment to make, having never lived without his brother for more than a few days in his entire life. So sure, yeah, he gets lonely. But it's a good kind of loneliness, it's the kind of lonely he wants to deal with and push through and find new ways to assuage. He wants Dean to have his own life, his own loves. Sam wants to do the same.

He reads for a while and goes to bed early.

Next week, he takes a deep breath and tells Dean, “So there's this girl Charlie -”

“Pregnant?” Dean's fork freezes halfway to his mouth. Maple syrup drips.

Sam rolls his eyes. “No, Dean -”

“Cheating on Jess?” Dean looks outraged. Then, suddenly worried. “Did you break up with Jess?”

“Shut your face,” Sam snaps. “Charlie's just a friend of a friend at school and she's kind of a huge nerd -”

“Aww,” Dean says. “You found your pack.”

“Will you eat your goddamn pancakes and shut up you jackass.” Sam stabs one of his own pancakes a little too aggressively.

Dean shrugs and shoves the bite in his mouth. “So Charlie,” he says with his mouth full.

“How does Cas put _up_ with you,” Sam complains. “But yeah, she's an RA, so she's got a big room to herself, and she has room parties pretty often to play Rockband or watch movies or whatever.”

“Cool.” Dean swigs his coffee. The diner around them clinks and murmurs with morning activity. “So?”

“So... she's been having people over every week to hang out and watch the new Thrones.”

Dean stabs his last bite of pancake, swishes it through the small lake of syrup still on his plate. “Yeah?”

“I mean.” Sam takes a breath. “I don't wanna just ditch you and Cas.”

“No, no,” Dean says, remarkably casual. “I think you should go hang out with your nerd clan. Charlie's playing the song of your people.”

“Dean -”

“Leave us old folks high and dry,” Dean says, looking at Sam too earnest to be real.

Sam makes a face. “Jerk.”

“Bitch.” Dean finishes his pancakes. “We'll just sit around wondering what the kids are doing these days,” he says speculatively. “Then we'll take our dentures out and go to bed at eight.”

Sam's mouth twitches with an involuntary smile. “You told me to shoot you if you ever lose more than half your teeth,” he points out.

“Yeah well.” Dean slurps from his chipped mug. “I didn't have anything to live for then, did I? Just your sorry face.”

Sam gives Dean a pained look, but his guts do a little pirouette of happiness. “So it won't be a _burden,_ then,” he says, “having to be stuck alone with Cas.”

“Nah.” Dean leans back in his chair. “You never know what us old farts might get up to.”

Sam groans.

The next evening, Cas has come over as usual and had the news broken to him that Sam'll be going elsewhere. He's polite and understanding and bemoans that Sam's presence will be missed. Unless Sam is reading him wrong, all of this is a little too shallow and rote to be entirely honest. Sam can barely keep his eye-rolling internal. It's obvious they can't wait to have the rest of the night free of Sam, and there isn't enough brain bleach in the world to tempt him to think about why.

At last he says his goodbyes and heads out. In the parking lot, however, he discovers that he's left his wallet with his campus ID, which he'll need to get into Charlie's dorm.

“Dammit,” he mutters, turning back.

All the way up the stairs to the apartment door, he braces himself for all kinds of brain bleach scenarios. Like, okay, they've only had about five minutes, so it can't be that bad. On the other hand, they had sure been antsy about getting Sam out the door.

At the door, Sam listens for a second but doesn't hear anything incriminating. Bracing, eyes half-shut, he reaches for the doorknob. At least he can make the best of it with a sudden entrance and a loud gotcha. Dean's done it to him enough times, the bastard.

So Sam throws open the door and strides in, a loud “Hey” right on his tongue, but he stops and the sound dies because they. are fucking. _cuddling._

Dean jumps like he's been shot and is already scrambling for a more dignified position while Cas makes a noise of complaint. If Sam's not mistaken, Dean had had his head on Cas' chest while Cas petted his hair.

“Sam!” Dean yells.

“Oh my god,” Sam says, already bubbling with laughter.

Dean's up from the couch and stomping out of the room in record time.

“You wanted me gone so you could get _schmoopy?”_

“It's called foreplay, Samantha!” comes Dean's yell from the kitchen.

“I think the kids these days are calling it hugging,” Sam fires back.

Sam edges into the living room and spots his wallet with his pile of books on the coffee table. When he darts over to grab it, he glances at Cas, who gives him a wounded, forlorn look.

“Sorry,” Sam says. “Really – really sorry.” He waves the wallet and runs just as Dean stalks back into the living room with two beers.

“You're _so_ dead, Sam,” Dean says mutinously, dropping the bottles onto the coffee table with loud thunks.

Sam holds up his hands innocently, wallet in one. “Hey,” he says, “you're getting in touch with your inner twelve-year-old girl, that's great.”

“That's it.” Dean moves so he's standing right in front of Cas and drops his hands to his belt buckle, unhooks it and unbuttons in one swift move. “C'mon Cas, this is how it's gotta be, Sammy's got expectations.”

Sam covers his eyes and howls at the look of pure frozen horror on Cas' face. _“Fuck_ you,” Sam cackles, and flings open the door.

“Yeah, don't come back til after midnight, fairy princess!”

“That doesn't even make any sense, Dean,” Sam hollers, and shuts the door.

So later, when Charlie breaks out jello shots (red for dragon's blood, green for mage fire), red velvet cupcakes with blobby red frosting she insists must be referred to as horse hearts, and, after the episode's over, Cards Against Humanity... Sam thinks _why the hell not,_ and stays. Somewhere around midnight he shoots Dean a text to the effect that he's going to crash here for the night, which he hopes at least marginally resembles English. Then he passes out on Charlie's floor because her couch is too short for his legs.

Midmorning the next day, a sympathetic Charlie shakes him awake and holds out a glass of alka-seltzered water. He drinks it and lies there feeling profound regret until he thinks to check his phone.

A text timestamped just after midnight says _ok have fun stormn the castle_

Then three close together: _how drum u / bet I got u beat / casss shots rum like Hubble_

a bit later: _fkn autocorrect_

much later: _sam I lick ur face rly u now. hope ur ok dont rivers_

Sam thunks his head back against the floor and regrets it immediately. The most recent text skips from a timestamp of about 1 am to 7 am.

_Sam this is Castiel. Dean is not dead of alcohol poisoning prev texts to the contrary. I believe he likes your face rather than licks it and entreated you not to drive. I do not know what Hubble was originally meant to be. I'm sure you are fine and will text back when you're awake._

Sam can't help snorting with laughter. He can easily imagine Dean getting maudlin drunk and being passive-aggressively mopey about Sam ditching, but then he can just as easily imagine Cas (who has a much higher alcohol tolerance than Dean which will never cease to amuse Sam) being there to make him drink water, hustle him to the bathroom before he pukes, pet his hair ( _pet his fucking hair;_ Sam laughs again) and generally hug it out. And it's such a relief, knowing Dean's got a net like that. Knowing he can go home and not have to deal with Dean being sullen, snappy, and hungover (or still smashed) just because he spent the night worrying when he swore he wouldn't. Because Sam _can't be_ that kid anymore, he can't be the helicopteree, subject to Dean's every twinge of toxic dependency; he's got to be his own person; he's got to know that Dean can let him go without getting hurt.

With Cas in the picture, it finally seems possible.

Sam sits up after a while, cracks the stiffness out of his spine and starts to compose a text back.

_i like your face too dean, but only cas better be doing any licking. jello shots are satans butthole. be home for lunch i'll bring you something deepfried w xtra grease for that hangover. tell cas he's a saint for putting up with you. jerk_

Twenty minutes later, after he's finally given his profuse apologies to Charlie (who is absurdly cheerful for a skinny whip of a girl who got just as drunk as everyone else – she must have the metabolism of the _gods_ ) and is heading out the door with his wallet and keys, his phone buzzes.

_bitch._

**Author's Note:**

> Involves a character being triggered and then talking about why (abuse); a completely wrong view of BDSM (which I recognize as such) and Dean's canon-typical level of self-hate. Also involves a character experiencing generalized anxiety. As a kind of personal catharsis, I gave Castiel my own diagnosis/ personal experience/ medical history with anxiety. No experience of anxiety is "typical" or "correct" because it's different for everyone!


End file.
